Administrators and the health care team
Both nurse administrators and hospital
administrators strongly supported the proposed
project as it helped to promote the infants health at
the initial step in the hospital and it was consistent
with the hospital policy for health promotion
within the hospital. The administrators supported
the initiation of developmental care in the unit
through staff education by providing resources
including budget, time, and facilities. The hospital
administrators provided further funding support
for two-day conferences and workshops. Concurrently,
the days of attendance were designated as regular
working days for the attendants.
Apart from the support from the hospital
administrators, nurse administrators and the
physicians, the team also considered the scheduling
of procedures performed by other hospital
departments such as in the laboratories, radiology,
and other diagnostic departments. The team
provided them with information about the project
which proved to be helpful in gaining their cooperation.
Most procedures were scheduled at convenient times
for the infants although there were times that needed
to be compromised due to scheduling demands
of other departments.
Hospital policy
During the study period, hospital accreditation
was developed and implemented as standardization
in the hospital policy. The neonatal intensive care
unit proposed a developmental care project as a
quality care project to serve the hospital policy. The
researcher and team members realized that the
hospital accreditation policy encouraged staff
nurses to cooperate in improving the quality of
nursing care and helped the team to work more
easily. Moreover, health promoting hospital was
currently the hospital policy, developmental care
aimed at promoting infantsû development and
preventing developmental problems started from the
first day of the infants in the NICU. Naturally
therefore, this project was fully supported by the
hospital administrators and nurse administrators
and a consequence of this support, was that the
project was more successful.